For many gardeners, finding new and original ways to divide up their space is difficult.

You could build walls, but that would block out the light. You could plant a hedge, but that would take up a lot of room. The answer we have found solves both of these problems: a laser cut garden screen.

Chris Beardshaw Adds Effect with Laser Cut Garden Screens

The Chelsea Flower Show heralds the start of the summer show garden season. It is here that gardeners design and create gardens that set the trends to come. A notable trend was for using metal to create sculptures and intricate designs including a few rather beautiful garden screens.

A particularly effective use of laser cut screens was in The Morgan Stanley Garden for Great Ormond Street Hospital. Designed by Chris Beardshaw, the aim of the garden is to give parents and families a private space to sit outside once the garden has been moved to its permanent location.

The-Morgan-Stanley-Garden-for-Great-Ormond-Street-Hospital

Photo Credit: RHS

The screens have been cut with a leaf pattern that has been intricately designed so that each leaf appears to be unique. The screens have been cleverly used to create a small, semi-private ‘room’ that looks onto a reflective water feature. The overall effect of the structure is to create a series of framed views of the colourful planting.

This garden also demonstrates the way that a laser cut screen can be used as a kind of roof, providing dappled shade. This feature is made poignant by the halo-like circle cut out above the statue looking up to the sky.

While you may not be a professional garden designer like Chris Beardshaw, he shows that laser cut screens can bring interest and beauty to an otherwise simple garden.

Using Steel in Your Outdoor Design

It only takes a brief look on a site like Pintrest to see that using screens in the garden is a popular trend. There are all sorts of different designs ranging from repeating geometric patterns to specially designed pieces.

There are also a variety of different materials being used. While wood might be a traditional fence material, there are many striking designs in metals particularly using steel. We really like the way that weathering steel slowly turns deep orange but there is something glamorous about the clean sparkle of stainless steel that we can’t resist.

Stainless steel is one of our favourite materials to laser cut because of the accuracy we can achieve. It is also perfect as a reflective surface in the garden making it feel bigger and brighter.

Rebecca Stoner, a surface pattern designer, made this screen for York Hospital earlier this year.

Laser-Cut-Panels-by-Rebecca-Stoner

Photo Credit: Rebecca Stoner

She was pleased with how easy it was to use precision laser cutting to add more intricate details to her design. While her screen was for a long corridor, her photo shows how effective the screen could have been used outside as a focal point.

Add Light to Create a Unique Space

Adding light into your garden can be difficult, especially if you have a walled garden. While a laser cut garden screen will allow for better light during the day, it is also worth considering adding some garden lights to highlight you beautiful screen at night too.

A particularly lovely example of back-lit laser cutting can be found in Perth, Australia in the Western Australia Botanic Garden.

Place-of-Reflection

Photo Credit: worldlandscapearchitect.com

Here the lit panel is a reflection of the pattern used in the awnings of a band stand with views over the coast. Now, admittedly, your average English garden isn’t going to be big enough for a band stand, or have a view of the coast, but this is a great example of how your laser cut panel can be turned into a feature at night as well.

Using CAD for Laser Design

Laser cutting is perfect for creating intricately patterned garden screens but designing these patterns can be easier said than done. Fortunately, Computer Aided Design solves this problem for you and can help with your laser design.

We used CAD to help us design these gates.

h-burrell-gates-subcon

Without CAD it would have been difficult to create a design like this because there are no obvious repeats in the pattern. This way, we could create a more natural scatter look without leaving any big gaps or overlapping too much.

Our 2 Axis Laser cutter has a tolerance as small as 0.1mm when cutting stainless steel which means that incredibly fine detail can be cut into the metal. Even with metals with a thickness of over 12mm, the tolerance for laser cutting is only 0.3mm. Very impressive.

This advantage meant that the stems of each leaf could be cut as fine as they are, giving these sturdy gates a more gentle feel.

 

These four examples of laser cut garden screens show how easy it can be to add a bit of drama and interest to your garden. At Subcon Laser we have plenty of experience with precision laser cutting and design and with a variety of materials to choose from, we feel sure that we can help you to create your dream laser cut garden screen.